Impact of corruption level on the legitimacy of state power power[Влияние Уровня Коррупции На Легитимность Государственной Власти]

Purpose. To establish the presence or absence of relationship between the level of corruption and the legitimacy of state power. To analyze how the level of corruption affects the legitimacy of state power. Methods. To solve the issue, two opposite approaches existing in the scientific community are ana-lyzed. The first, which is more common, is that corruption is assessed as a factor negatively affectingthe legitimacy of state power. In the second approach, it is noted that the possibility of committing corruption crimes with impunity ensures the loyalty of the state authorities among the elites. Taking into account the theoretical approaches, the paper compares surveys and ratings that demonstrate the perception of corruption by the population in the Russian Federation with surveys that reflect the level of legitimacy of state power and other indicators that reflect the studied problem. Results. Using the empirical data, the relationship between the level of perception of the problem of corruption and the approval ratings of the authorities and trust in it was established. It was found that the dynamics of perception of the problem of corruption does not always correspond to the dynamics of actual corruption. It is concluded that the level of legitimacy of state power depends on the level of perception of corruption, which may not correspond to the actual level of corruption due to the many factors, including such as active coverage of corruption issues in the media, public response caused by individual corrup-tion crimes, etc. In addition, the author makes a conclusion on what types of corruption affect public opinion and may negatively affect the level of legitimacy of state power. The scientific novelty includes complex consideration of the influence of corruption on the legitimacy of state power by comparing statistical data characterizing different sides of the studied phenomena.